ENDING IT

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

When you run one of these blog deals, there are certain subjects that you tend to avoid and one of these is suicide. Whether you mean to or not, it’s too easy to come off as a heartless bastard so it’s better to just avoid the topic altogether and not run the risk.

But some times, you have to man up, face things squarely and let the chips fall wherever they may. Particularly when Gene Robinson, the homosexual Episcopal Bishop of As-If-Anybody-Still-Gives-A-Crap-Anymore believes that traditional Christianity is killing people:

An increasingly popular bumper sticker reads, “Guns Don’t Kill People — RELIGION Kills People!” In light of recent events I would add religion kills young people: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young people.

Perhaps not directly, though. And religion is certainly not the only source of anti-gay sentiment in the culture. But it’s hard to deny that religious voices denouncing LGBT people contribute to the atmosphere in which violence against LGBT people and bullying of LGBT youth can flourish.

I don’t know what any of your younger years were like. Maybe you were attractive to someone or other, got dates fairly regularly and ended up marrying someone and raising kids of your own.

Were there kids on the bottom of your high school’s social totem pole? A little short, a little fat, a physical peculiarity or two? If they were male, the hot women wouldn’t give them the time of day and if they were female, they were, in all likelihood, what we used to refer to as “easy.”

Many of the latter ended up in loveless marriages that probably spawned a kid or two and may or may not have lasted all that long. Many of the former, particularly if they were, as I was, restrained by that whole Biblical “no sex outside of marriage” thing, spent their Friday nights alone blasting the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Streetthrough their parents’ record players.

Unless you’ve been on the bottom end of your particular social hierarchy, you not only don’t understand what it is like, you can’t understand what it is like. I’m not personally aware of anyone I grew up with who killed him or herself over all this. I definitely know of one who considered the idea from time to time as he grew older.

You’re reading his words right now. And the really funny thing is that he spent his formative years inside an Episcopal parish.

Teenage suicides happen for lots of reasons. Regrettably, bullied or socially-awkward boys and girls, heterosexual and not, kill themselves every year. I wish it were not so but it is.

All suicides, for whatever reasons they occur, are tragedies of the first order. So for Robbie to suggest, as he seems to here, that the suicides of homosexual teens are somehow more tragic than anyone else’s is nothing short of monstrous.

After rattling off a few examples of these tragedies, Robbie tries this smack out.

Think about it. If Tyler had been heterosexual and instead filmed having sex with his girlfriend, it would still be an inappropriate invasion of his privacy and tasteless to post the video online. And it certainly would have been embarrassing for Tyler and the girl. But chances are he would have been the recipient of some congratulatory remarks from friends about what a stud he was. And if he was straight he likely wouldn’t have contemplated — not to mention successfully accomplished — his own suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Possibly. Or he would still be spitting out teeth after the girl’s father punched him in the mouth. If it had been me, I would have taken all of roomie’s computer equipment(along with his clothes and everything else breakable that he owned) to the top of the dorm, filmed myself throwing it to the sidewalk below and posted it to YouTube.

Then I would have shown Rooms the new and really heavy baseball bat I had just purchased and informed him that he really ought to transfer to another dorm yesterday if he knew what I mean and I think he did.

But back to Robbie. Since like most of the ministers of his religion, Gene Robinson emotes rather than thinks, my man can’t help dynamiting his own argument.

With the exception of Brown in Texas these suicides are not happening in Bible Belt regions of the country, where we might predict a greater-than-usual regard for religious thought. Instead, they are occurring in states perceived to be more liberal on LGBT issues: California, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Really. For the most part, these suicides are happening in places where the influence of traditional Christianity is weakest? What’s that tell you, Robbie?

Here’s a suggestion. Maybe all those gay kids offing themselves are Episcopalians. Maybe they realize that you’re lying to them and, well, can’t deal with it. Makes as much sense as your idea.

Despite the progress we’re making on achieving equality under the law and acceptance in society for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, why this rash of bullying, paired with self-loathing, ending in suicide? With humility and heartfelt repentance I assert that religion — and its general rejection of homosexuality — plays a crucial role in this crisis.

On the one hand, Religious Right hatemongers and crazies are spewing all sorts of venom and condemnation, all in the name of a loving God. The second-highest-ranking Mormon leader, Boyd K. Packer, recently called same-sex attraction “impure and unnatural” in an act of unspeakable insensitivity at the height of this rash of teen suicides. He declared that it can be cured, and that same-sex unions are morally repugnant and “against God’s law and nature.”

Just as many gay kids grow up in these conservative denominations as any other. They are told day in and day out that they are an abomination before God. Just consider the sheer numbers of LGBT kids growing up right now in Roman Catholic, Mormon, and other conservative religious households. The pain and self-loathing caused by such a distortion of God’s will is undeniable and tragic, causing scars and indescribable self-alienation in these young victims.

These bullying behaviors would not exist without the undergirding and the patina of respect provided by religious fervor against LGBT people. It’s time for “tolerant” religious people to acknowledge the straight line between the official anti-gay theologies of their denominations and the deaths of these young people. Nothing short of changing our theology of human sexuality will save these young and precious lives.

Once again. If you think that suicides among one particular group are more tragic than other suicides, than I have nothing more to debate or discuss with you. Because you are a moral cretin of the highest order.

You know what those words say. It’s your right to accept or reject those words. But if you sincerely believe that those are the words of the creator of all that is, you have no right to change them simply because they get in your way.